Dan Shechtman is an Israeli scientist known for his groundbreaking work in the field of materials science. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011 for discovering quasicrystals, a new form of matter that has an ordered structure but does not repeat periodically. This discovery challenged the traditional understanding of crystallography. Shechtman’s research began in the 1980s when he observed unusual patterns in the atomic structure of a metal alloy. His findings initially faced skepticism from the scientific community, but they eventually led to a deeper understanding of solid-state physics and opened new avenues for research in materials.